Baby boy brings us joy; taxis reject me so I take long walk

My wife Phuong endured a short but painful labor that ended in a c-section and the birth of a healthy boy -- Elijah Pham Millman -- on May 6 at 3:45 a.m. Mom and baby are doing great now. There was some concern about blood loss by Phuong, but all turned out well. We're both happy beyond belief. I wasn't at the hospital -- Phuong's mom went with her. I stayed at home with Joanna, cooking, cleaning and trying to handle a little girl whose become quite a handful, especially with mom having a difficult pregnancy and then disappearing one night. We explained the situation to Joanna, and I think she got most of it. Anyway, only one person was allowed to accompany the moms-to-be in the hospital due to coronavirus fears. Phuong went to the hospital late on Tuesday night, gave birth Wednesday, and returned home Saturday afternoon. Not bad for a woman who had a c-section. She's tough.

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I fell down our stairs carrying laundry and bent my left knee well beyond its normal limits. The good news is that knee pain took my mind off my sciatica.  I had to man-up the next day when I took Joanna shopping at Vincom. After buying clothes and groceries for the family, I stood outside the mall and tried to hail a taxi. Three taxi drivers about 20 feet away laughed at me and Joanna, and refused to give us a ride. I'm not sure why. Maybe we weren't going far enough. (Joanna used up my cell phone's battery watching videos in the mall, so we were sort of stuck.) One of the drivers walked up to me basically to start a confrontation, I guess, laughing and waving his hand at me. This is the third time I've been refused a ride by taxis outside Vincom. Here's where I manned up. I ignored the driver, of course, then covered Joanna's head with a t-shirt I had just bought, put her on my shoulders, and walked 1.6 miles home in 99-degree heat along a dirty, dusty and dangerous road (Vo Thi Sau) that was having construction work done on the gutters and shoulders. I didn't even think about my knee during the walk. I was worried about the drivers and if the heat would bother Joanna, but we stopped for water and I dumped cold water over her head twice. She had fun, pointing out the "diggers and excavators" along the way. I don't care when taxi drivers act like this to me, but I was flabbergasted they would do this to a 3-year-old girl. As long as the knee holds up, I'll walk.

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I've enrolled Joanna in a pre-school here since Phuong's U.S. visa interview has been indefinitely postponed due to coronavirus. School is from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a break roughly from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and nap. We'll see how it goes. Lockdown ended here late April and early May, but Joanna has been bored. The heat doesn't help -- it was 93 at 8 a.m. this week. Classes are taught in Vietnamese with an hour or so of English every day. Joanna only speaks English but can understand a little Vietnamese when pushed. Being bilingual can only help her.

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We've had 318 total cases of coronavirus in Vietnam. The U.S. currently has more than 90,000 deaths from the virus, so I'm going to say we're fortunate to be where we are. That's one of the reasons we enrolled Joanna in school. Along with everyone else, we have no idea what the future holds.